- United States
- Texas
- Letter
Vote against Rep. Keith Self's joint resolution to repeal the 17th Amendment. This proposal would strip voters of the right to directly elect their U.S. Senators and hand that power back to state legislatures. That is not a reform — it is a rollback of over a century of democratic progress.
The 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913 precisely because state legislatures had proven themselves corrupt, deadlocked, and unaccountable in choosing senators. Returning to that system doesn't fix the House-Senate feud driving this proposal — it just buries the problem under a layer of insulation from the public. Senators would answer to statehouse politicians, not the people they're supposed to represent.
Representative democracy means voters choose their representatives. All of them. The moment we start removing elections from the equation, we're not reforming government — we're dismantling it. Please oppose this resolution and make clear that disenfranchising the American public is not a solution to an internal congressional dispute.